Trump’s Kicks Off Retribution Tour With New Order Targeting Critics

Donald Trump is taking revenge against two officials from his first term.  

On Wednesday, the president issued directives stripping the security clearances of Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor and ordering the Department of Justice to open investigations against them, characterizing Taylor’s criticisms of him as “treasonous” and calling Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor.” 

Krebs, who ran the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, affirmed Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020, saying at the time that “claims [of fraud] either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent” and authorizing a statement from CISA that the election was secure. Trump subsequently fired him by tweet.

Later, Krebs was a witness for the House January 6 committee, providing information on securing the 2020 election, testifying that “Republican officials, senior officials, including the former president, lied to the American people about the security of the 2020 election.”

Krebs now works at cybersecurity company SentinelOne, and Trump’s order not only targets him but strips the security clearances of anyone at the company who works with him. As Trump signed the order against Krebs Wednesday, he let everyone know that he still isn’t over losing in 2020, calling the election “rigged.” 

“It was proven by so many different ways in so many different forms,” Trump said. “We’re going to find out about this guy too, because this guy is a wise guy.”

Taylor famously wrote an anonymous New York Times op-ed criticizing Trump in 2018 while working for the Department of Homeland Security. He left the Trump administration in 2019 and, upon revealing his identity, wrote a book detailing the chaos he observed from Trump. He went on to endorse Biden before the 2020 election, although Trump on Wednesday said, “I barely remember him.” 

“Somebody that went out and wrote a book and said all sorts of terrible things that were all lies,” Trump said. “I think he’s guilty of treason.”

The order against Taylor is so broad that it even suspends the security clearances of “individuals at entities associated with Taylor, including the University of Pennsylvania, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”

On X, Taylor posted that “I said this would happen.” 

“Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point,” Taylor wrote. 

All of this shows that Trump would not only escape consequences for his actions if he was reelected but that he always planned to take revenge on his critics if he was able to return to the White House. Now the checks on his power are minimal at best.

Many were surprised Wednesday by Donald Trump’s decision to put a 90-day pause on a majority of his sweeping tariffs on other countries (with the exception of China), but only one person was in the midst of defending those very tariffs to Congress.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer sat before the House Ways and Means Committee, where he’d been testifying for nearly four hours in defense of Trump’s “reciprocal tariff” policy, when the president announced the pause.

Democratic Representative Steven Horsford was the first to question Greer about the pause, and asked when exactly he had been made aware that Trump planned to walk back his sweeping tariffs.

“I understood the decision was made a few minutes ago,” Greer said, noting it had been “under discussion.”

“So did you know that this was ‘under discussion,’ and why did you not include this in your opening remarks?” Horsford said.

Greer said he wouldn’t “divulge the contents” of his discussions with the president.

Horsford pressed for details from Greer, but the trade representative couldn’t provide any information on the 90-day deadline, saying he didn’t know all the details because he’d been in the hearing all day.

“So the trade representative hasn’t spoken to the president of the United States about a global reordering of trade? And yet he’s—but yet he announced it on a tweet!” Horsford said above Greer’s protests. “WTF! Who’s in charge?!”

“The president of the United States is in charge,” Greer replied.

“And what do you know about those details? It looks like your boss just pulled out the rug from under you and paused the tariff—the taxes on the American people,” Horsford said. “There is no strategy! You just found out three seconds ago, sitting there; we saw you!”

The Nevada Democrat continued to press Greer on his failure to disclose Trump’s plan at any point during the lengthy hearing. “If you came here knowing that these tariffs were going to be turned off, why didn’t you include that in your opening statement, why didn’t you reference that as part of your testimony?”

Greer repeated that he wouldn’t discuss his conversations with the president.

“These were specific questions. We asked you all along, what’s the strategy? These are real consequences for the American people and small businesses,” Horsford said, exasperated.

“This is amateur hour, and it needs to stop! What does this even mean for your negotiating strategy? How are you in charge of negotiation if the president is tweeting about this, wherever the hell he is?”

When Horsford asked Greer directly if he knew it was happening, Greer would only repeat that they’d been “discussing it.”

“There was no strategy, there was no plan. The president chose to take actions that he didn’t have the authority to take. He has put our economy in near collapse,” Horsford said.

He then asked Greer about the issue on everyone’s mind. Earlier Wednesday, amid a roiling stock market, Trump had advised his followers on Truth Social that it was a “great time to buy.” After announcing the 90-day pause on tariffs, the market shot back up.

“Is this market manipulation?” Horsford asked.

“No,” Greer replied.

“Why not? If it was a plan, if it was always the plan, how is this not market manipulation?” Horsford asked.

“It’s not market manipulation, Sir,” Greer insisted.

“Well then what is it, because it sure is not a strategy!” Horsford said.

“We’re trying to reset the global trade system—” Greer said, before he was cut off.

“And what has that done? And how have you achieved any of that? But to enact enormous harm on the American people, which was our concern from the very beginning!” Horsford said, adding, “So, if it’s not market manipulation, what is it? Who’s benefiting? What billionaire just got richer?”

Horsford noted that all the Republican members of the committee had left “because they don’t want to defend this!”

On X, Horsford posted a picture of Greer conferring with his colleague, captioning it: “What it looks like when you’re the country’s trade representative testifying before Congress and you find out Trump changed his mind on tariffs.”

“This is reckless governing. There is no strategy and it’s obvious this is amateur hour,” Horsford wrote.

The Trump administration is now going to screen immigrants’ social media as grounds for denying immigration benefits, including international students and people applying for permanent residency.

The Department of Homeland Security announced the move in a press release Wednesday afternoon, saying that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would be taking action, effective immediately, against “antisemitic activity on social media and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals.”

“DHS will enforce all relevant immigration laws to the maximum degree, to protect the homeland from extremists and terrorist aliens, including those who support antisemitic terrorism, violent antisemitic ideologies and antisemitic terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or Ansar Allah aka: ‘the Houthis,’” the statement read.

The move follows the visa revocations and detention of students who have advocated for Palestine, such as Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, as well as the arrest and detention of Columbia University graduate and permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil. In both cases, the government made no indication that it has followed due process, and the two are not alone: Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims to have revoked the visas of over 300 students before Wednesday’s announcement.

Now DHS will begin policing the opinions of anyone seeking to study in the United States, ostensibly on grounds of opposing “antisemitic terrorism.” In reality, there is no proof that Khalil, Öztürk, or many other targeted students engaged in terrorism. Rather, the Trump administration has redefined terrorism to mean opposition to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza and support for Palestinian self-determination. In effect, the message is that immigrants and visitors to the U.S. no longer have the right to free speech.

Trump may have accidentally confessed to insider trading and market manipulation on Truth Social. 

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” the president wrote on Wednesday, a mere four hours before announcing a 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs except for China, yet another market-shocking announcement that caused stocks to shoot up. 

Insider trading is a very illegal practice that involves using special or private information to give yourself an advantage in buying and selling stocks. Someone with knowledge of an economic policy change that would cause the markets to shoot back up would be posting about how great a time it is to buy right before the policy change happened. This particular situation looks like the opposite of a pump and dump: a poop and scoop. This is when an exclusive group of people with private knowledge do whatever they can to drive stock prices down—like announcing debilitating global tariffs—and then buy stocks up strategically before the price goes up again. And with this administration, the corruption is completely out in the open. 

“Trump is creating giant market fluctuations with his on-again, off-again tariffs. These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading,” Senator Adam Schiff wrote on X. “Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell  stocks, and profit at the public’s expense? I’m writing to the White House—the public has a right to know.”

“Trump’s Truth Social now basically promotes veiled insider trading on upcoming announcements,” wrote health and economics expert Eric Feigl-Ding. “Trump’s benefactors are gleefully watching.”

The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin called it two days ago on CNBC. *

“Given what the government’s been doing, and what this administration’s been doing, it would not shock me—and I hate to speculate—if we were to find out that a whole bunch of people who work in Washington as our elected leaders … ultimately sold stocks last week, or potentially worse than that, shorted the market.” 

The Trump administration—after crashing the global stock market and eroding U.S. legitimacy—is attempting to spin this as a win. 

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

* This article originally misstated Sorkin’s first name.

Donald Trump is once again the laughingstock of the internet after his shocking decision Wednesday to issue a 90-day pause on some of his sweeping tariffs—with the exception of China—after the White House insisted for days that the president had no intention to hit the brakes. 

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, as she tried to spin Trump’s sudden reversal as part of a long-unfolding plan to either boost domestic manufacturing or something else entirely—actually, it’s become kind of unclear. 

Online people were quick to make what have now become running jokes about Trump’s so-called “art,” and the Trump administration’s mind-boggling insistence that his tariffs are at once a brilliant negotiation tactic and a legitimate policy meant to bolster the U.S. economy. 

“Oh my god she did the meme,” wrote Tahra Jirari, the director of economic analysis at the Chamber of Progress, on X.  

“The Art of the Deal is panicking and reversing course less than 24 hours after tariffs go into effect?” wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melchick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, in a post on X. 

Pod Save America host Jon Favreau also took aim at Trump’s deal-making prowess, writing, on X, “Art of the Deal: 1) Impose massive tariffs on nearly every country that crash the markets and create the conditions for global economic collapse 2) Make zero deals with zero countries 3) Pause tariffs 4) VICTORY!!”

While Trump bragged about the scores of foreign leaders who’d come to kiss the ring, many foreign officials said that they’d received no reply to their requests to make a deal with the Trump administration, according to Politico. 

With Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s hollow claims that Trump’s decision was not a response to the last week’s tumultuous stock market, many struggled to understand Trump’s rationale in power-checking foreign countries. 

Meanwhile, others suggested that Trump, having urged his followers on Truth Social that it was a “great time to buy” earlier Wednesday, was attempting to create a window for his allies to buy low, knowing he was about to rescind his tariffs.

But Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz pointed out that there was likely no method to Trump’s madness at all. 

“OUR PLAN IS WORKING PERFECTLY AND IS JUST A NEGOTIATING TACTIC BUT IT IS ALSO GOING TO BE PERMANENT AND WE WILL BE THE WORLD LEADER IN TEXTILES AND NOW THERE IS A PAUSE AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO CHILL BUT ALSO WE WILL NEVER BACK DOWN AAAAAAHHHHHH,” Schatz wrote in a hilariously candid post on X.

Donald Trump’s reversal on tariffs Wednesday afternoon seems to have caught his administration off guard.

The president announced on Truth Social that tariffs would return to a baseline 10 percent level in most countries, while staggering 125 percent duties would be imposed on China. But his own officials couldn’t explain why. When a reporter asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent if he could, he replied, “No.”

“Again, President Trump created maximum leverage for himself,” Bessent said, adding, “We have just been overwhelmed, overwhelmed by the response mostly from our allies who want to come and negotiate in good faith.”

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, as usual, took a combative approach, telling reporters, “Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal, you clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.”

It’s obvious at this point that Trump has never had a plan for his tariff scheme, and is making it up as he goes along. Wednesday’s reversal was likely prompted by growing criticism from his own supporters and normally fawning right-wing media and by a government debt sell-off, showing weakening confidence in the American economy. But Trump’s own sycophants aren’t going to admit that the president would ever back off.

As Donald Trump’s tariff plan slams the stock market, investors are beginning to wonder if the president doesn’t have some broader economic agenda—but rather if he’s just mentally ill.

“In the last few days, we have had many conversations with macro fund managers,” wrote Tom Lee, the head of research at the financial analysis firm FSInsights.

“And their concern is that the White House is not acting rationally, but rather on ideology. And some even fear that this may not even be ideology,” Lee continued. “A few have quietly wondered if the President might be insane.”

Lee placed the blame for any economic fallout squarely in Trump’s lap, arguing that Trump’s decisions behind the Resolute Desk lead to a “binary outcome,” though they don’t always make sense.

“Multiple officials have stated they do not want nor expect a recession. And there are enough economy-savvy advisors that they are aware of this. Moreover, the two-to-three percent fiscal stimulus needed to reverse a recession would negate any promised cuts to government spending,” Lee wrote, underscoring that “this is a rational view.

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs and unexpected tariff reversals gave the market whiplash on Wednesday. China and the U.S. volleyed for most of the day, with Trump eventually claiming that he would spike levies on the nation, one of America’s biggest trading partners, to 125 percent after China revealed its own reciprocal tariff rate at 84 percent on U.S. goods.

Then, in the afternoon, the White House announced that it would be instituting a pause on the majority of its tariffs (except on China), lowering the tariffs to a universal baseline rate of 10 percent.

That sent the market into a frenzy, with the S&P 500 spiking by 7 percent in a matter of minutes.

Lee’s assessment—which was published early Wednesday, before the swing—argued that prolonged stock fluctuations would lead to “tightening financial conditions.”

“Thus, the longer this volatility lasts, the greater the risk the US and the world are getting pushed into a needless recession,” he warned.

Other financial experts, including JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Diamond, have similarly assessed that Trump’s plan has pushed the U.S. to the brink of a recession.

Donald Trump has placed a 90-day pause on most of his reciprocal tariffs, despite repeatedly insisting that no such pause would take place. 

“Based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.

Trump refused to stop his trade war with China, however, declaring in the same announcement that tariffs on the country would rise even more, to 125 percent. 

“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately. At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable,” Trump wrote in the same Truth Social post.

While the 10 percent tariffs on remaining countries is a significant reduction, by the measure of just a few months ago, it’s still quite extreme.

Trump’s decision to renege on his aggressive “Liberation Day” tariffs was almost immediately met with allegations of caving at best and market manipulation at worst.  

“Wow. Trump just caved on the sweeping across-the-board tariffs, issuing a 90-day pause,” wrote Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett. “All of that chaos, trillions of dollars evaporated—for nothing at all.”

“[Trump] has put our economy in disarray and near collapse. We have small businesses and Americans who are concerned about their well-being…. We have people that are planning to send their kids to college this fall, people who are retiring whose benefits have declined,” Representative Steven Horsford asked Trump Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at a hearing mere minutes after Trump tweeted out the news. “Is this market manipulation?”

“No,” said Greer.

“Why not? If it was always the plan, how is this not market manipulation? 

“It’s not market manipulation,” Greer insisted again. 

“So if it’s not market manipulation, what is it? Who’s benefiting? What billionaire just got richer? And all the while, there aren’t even any Republicans left in this hearing.” 

This story has been updated.

Lawyers for a man mistakenly deported to El Salvador slammed the Department of Justice for trying to claim that the foreign country could have its own reasons for keeping him in prison.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was one of many alleged gang members that the Trump administration deported to El Salvador in mid-March, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act and denying detainees’ due process. The government later admitted that Abrego Garcia, who has no criminal record, was included on the flight manifest due to an “administrative error,” and had been subject to a protective order shielding him from deportation to El Salvador because he faced a legitimate threat of persecution there.

The Supreme Court on Monday halted a judge’s order to immediately retrieve Abrego Garcia. The government has continued to claim it cannot retrieve Abrego Garcia, who is among those incarcerated in El Slavador’s notorious mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, for a plethora of reasons. In a filing Monday, the DOJ claimed one more, alleging that El Salvador’s government “may have its own compelling reasons to detain” Abrego Garcia, and “has its own legal rationales for detaining members of … foreign terrorist groups like MS-13”—which the U.S. government has yet to actually demonstrate that Abrego Garcia is.

But, in an eight-page filing Wednesday, lawyers for Abrego Garcia shot down the DOJ’s attempt to “ominously” introduce a flimsy excuse for leaving him there.

“These vague speculations are forfeited because they were never previously asserted and, in any event, devoid of factual support,” the lawyers wrote.

“There is no actual evidence that any nation has a criminal charge against Abrego Garcia. The only evidence is that he has never been charged or convicted of a crime in any country. And, of course, Abrego Garcia has not even lived in El Salvador since 2011—some 14 years ago—when he was 16 years old, rendering the Government’s claim implausible,” the lawyers wrote. “If the Government has evidence as to Abrego Garcia, it should say so. It refuses.

“The Government’s retreat to innuendo cannot bear the weight of the extraordinary relief it seeks: to perpetuate an unlawful incarceration that the United States itself engineered,” the lawyers added.

The U.S. economy is cratering, the White House has fractured some of the country’s longest-standing global alliances, and foreign nations are marking the end of American economic dominance. But speaking at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner on Tuesday night, Donald Trump was apparently more interested in using the intraparty platform to slander and roast his first-term enemies than address or assuage concerns over America’s debilitating problems.

The end result was a hodgepodge of some of Trump’s greatest hits, begging the question if Trump is attempting to redirect conservative attention toward the rhetoric that got his base jazzed to support him in the first place. The subjects of his insults included President Joe Biden, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and several liberal lawmakers who’ve dared to speak out against the president’s agenda.

Imploring Republicans to recenter their focus on winning their respective midterm elections, Trump warned that Democrats would “try to reverse all of the progress that we’ve made” should they retake the House in 2026.

“The House will be run by the same band of radicals and lunatics,” Trump said, shouting out House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Pelosi, and “weird” Al Green, the last of whom offered the only disruptive protest during Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress last month.

“He’s a weird dude,” the president continued. “He should have been treated very badly for the way he behaved that night.”

Six months after he won the election, Trump also took time away from his speech to ask the crowd if they’d rather he refer to Biden as “Crooked Joe” or “Sleepy Joe.” After equally muted applause for both options, Trump laughed.

“That’s my problem, it’s like the same—they both work, they both work beautifully,” Trump said.

Trump also devoted some of the night to speaking about California Senator Adam Schiff, whom Trump has previously referred to as the “enemy from within” for serving as the lead prosecutor in the first impeachment trial against him.

“Adam Schifty Schiff—can you believe this guy? He’s got the smallest neck I’ve ever seen,” the president said. “And the biggest head. We call him Watermelon Head.”

“I’d say how can that big fat face stand on a neck that looked like this finger? How can it? It’s the weirdest thing. It’s a mystery, nobody can understand it,” Trump continued, deriding Schiff as one of the “most dishonest human beings” he’d ever seen.

“How we can allow people like that to run in office is a shame,” the orange-coded convicted felon added. “He was in charge of the witch hunt. He was in charge of the fake witch hunt with Russia, Russia, Russia.”